Race Week Round 1

This weekend, I’ll be participating in my “race before the race”. I’ve run the Color Run before but that doesn’t have the same feel as a RACE to me and I wanted to make sure that I got a good sense of how race day and race week should operate.

I signed up for this race because it is far enough away from my half-marathon that I could recover completely. I also knew that I’d be past this distance in my training so I’d have little to no anxiety about running this far. There are other nuances that I wanted to get a better feel for before going the distance. My body reacts to food a little differently than most in the mornings so I wanted to test my stomach to see what I can and cannot eat for longer runs. I’ll go with my normal Rice Cake with a dash of PB and some banana but that might not be all that I need. I’ll also pack my Herbalife Prolong in case I feel that the food isn’t sustaining my run any longer.

I also wanted to just see how my body reacts to longer runs so early in the morning. So far, my morning runs have maxed out around 3 miles. I’m used to running on fuel I’ve stored throughout the day so I’m curious to see how my body will react to an early morning run with just breakfast to tie me over.

I am running this race by myself and there are no headphones permitted. This will be a good race for me to test my inner motivation and not depend on outside stimulation to power me through. I’ve run this course (shorter distance) while I was in college so I’m familiar with the terrain and I’ve had to run it without headphones in the past.

On top of all of the actual race day tests, I’ll be testing myself this week regarding sleep patterns, nutrition, and runs. I know that I’ll do at least one 7.5 miler this week in order to stay on track for my half-marathon training but I need to do that earlier in the week to ensure my glycogen stores can rebuild and legs can be rested. Aside from that 7.5 miler, I’m going to keep my distance between 3.5-4.5. I want to see how my body reacts on Sunday to pushing these distances. I feel as though I’ll have no problem but there are so many things that can happen.

I am so excited for race day. It feels like I’m back in my UCF Volleyball days and I’m preparing for one of the bigger games of the season. That competitiveness that has always burned within me – duller at times – is back in full flame and I cannot wait until Sunday~